


Orphans’ Christmas

by Solshine



Series: The Continuing Adventures of The Sad Orphan Kissing Society [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Christmas, F/F, F/M, Found Family, Plotless Fluff, Rated for a tiny bit of naughty language (blame Éponine), Threesome - F/F/M, Triad - Freeform, more tooth-rotting than Cosette’s Christmas cookies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-26 00:58:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13224855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solshine/pseuds/Solshine
Summary: Marius spends Christmas with his girlfriends—and his girlfriend’s brother, and his other girlfriend’s dad, and his girlfriend’s dad’s boyfriend. It’s nice to have a family for Christmas again, no matter how strange it might look.





	Orphans’ Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> I had some downtime in my Christmas Eve prep, so I asked my friend Bridget to give me a seasonal prompt... and didn’t get it finished until now. Oops.
> 
> Hilariously, SOKC has been a series in my head—and in my WIP folder—for a LONG time. So it’s ridiculous that this plotless little piece I wrote in a week is the first addition to get published, but there it is. If there’s anything you’d like to see these nerds do, few ships make me want to write dumb domestic bullshit like this one.
> 
> Happy new year, everyone!

It’s not that Christmas with Marius’s grandfather was all that much fun, really. But of all the side-effects of being suddenly family-less, making Christmas plans is certainly one of the most gloomy.

The first year, Courfeyrac invited him to his family Christmas all the way back in September.

“I wouldn’t want to impose on your family at Christmas,” Marius tried to say, but Courfeyrac didn’t even let him finish the sentence.

“Don’t be stupid, you wouldn’t be imposing at all,” Courfeyrac said. “That’s what Christmas is for, to have your family and friends around you. If I had to imagine you moping around this cruddy old place at Christmas I wouldn’t be able to— Well, I’d still be able to eat my Christmas ham. But it wouldn’t agree with me.” And that was that.

Courfeyrac’s large extended family made for a cheerful gathering. Very cheerful. Very cheerful and loud. They were just as friendly and welcoming as Courfeyrac had promised they’d be, which was part of the problem. Being surrounded by very kind strangers was better than being alone, but still. Marius spent much of the three-day visit trying to find a corner of the house where he could hide from another herd of shrieking young cousins and siblings or round of party games or platter of homebaked something or other. 

So no, he swore. Not doing that again.

Then he met Éponine. She got custody of Gavroche just before Christmas, and invited Marius to come do Christmas with them.

“Orphans’ Christmas,” she said, but her smile was strained. Marius suspected it was partially because she wanted a buffer between her and this kid she hardly knew anymore. 

It was nothing like Courfeyrac’s family’s Christmas. It was laid back and simple, and it was nice not to feel like the only person out of place. And Gavroche wasn’t the shrieking type, but he kept either Marius or Éponine from getting uncomfortable with a steady pinball between the two of them, the plate of Christmas cookies, and his haul of stocking candy and the pile of presents Éponine had probably skipped a bill or two to buy. (Marius had bought him a monopoly game, and Gavroche spent a long time poring gravely over the instruction book.) The next year was even cozier, casual and happy, just the three of them.

This year, though, Marius is feeling a little nervous again.

“It’ll be fine,” Cosette reassures them yet again. “You have to come, it won’t be Christmas without you!”

“I wanna come,” Gavroche volunteers. “Cosette’s dad is rich, Christmas at their place is probably awesome!”

“Gavroche,” Éponine admonishes, more out of a sense of responsibility than any fear of offense. Cosette laughs.

“It is awesome,” she says, not afraid of leveraging a twelve year old’s Christmas motivation against her girlfriend. “We do the whole shebang. You guys are coming, right?”

“Yeah!” Gavroche crows, and Éponine rolls her eyes. 

“I guess,” she sighs. Marius suspects, however, that Éponine is secretly excited too.

“There’s just one thing I have to mention,” Cosette says later when Éponine walks her and Marius out to the front step. “About Christmas.”

”Here we go,” Éponine mutters. Cosette swats her lightly on the arm.

“It’s not a big deal,” she promises. “Papa is just… he’s going to have a guest too. You don’t have to bring him a present or anything,” she adds quickly. “You don’t have bring presents at all! I just wanted to let you know. He doesn’t have family to visit either. I mean… you know. Like us.”

“Who is it?” Marius asks. A smile steals onto Cosette’s face.

“Some guy my dad is… seeing,” she says. Éponine’s eyebrows jump. 

“Seeing?” she repeats. “Shit, I didn’t even know your dad was gay.”

“It’s new,” Cosette says, still grinning. “I mean, the man is new. I guess? I think they used to know each other, but they just reunited recently. A couple months, but I think they’re taking it slow. Papa being… gay, or something like it probably isn’t new. It’s not really something he talks about.” She’s babbling a little. Éponine has noticed it too. She lays a hand on Cosette’s elbow just as Marius closes a hand around hers.

“We’ll be good,” Éponine promises.

“Yeah,” Marius says. “We’ll welcome him to the family.” It is exactly the right thing to say; Cosette beams.

Well, he’s still nervous, sure, but Éponine and Gav will still be there, and he’s used to Christmas with them. And he’s always comfortable around Cosette too by now, and they’ve had dinner with Cosette’s father a dozen times over the last several months. He’s a kind, generous man, and Marius feels sure any man he loves has got to be kind and generous too. There’s no reason to worry.

He gets a present for her father’s guest anyway—a bottle of red wine Courfeyrac recommends before jaunting off to his noisy family Christmas. Marius wishes him many happy returns of the season, and is fervently glad he’s not coming along. The Christmas he’s going to only has—he counts on his fingers—five people, and he knows almost all of them. It’ll be fine.

He picks ’Ponine and Gavroche up on Christmas morning—the former wearing a nice blouse and skirt and a sophisticated wine lipstick and the latter scrubbed, brushed, and ironed within an inch of his life—and drives them to the Fauchelevent house.

“Did you get him something?” Éponine asks.

“Who?” Marius asks, frowning. “Mr. Fauchelevent?”

Éponine rolls her eyes. “I already know you got Jean something,” she says. (Marius is the only one of the three of them in the car who still hasn’t adjusted to Cosette’s father’s insistence they call him by his first name.) “I mean his boyfriend.”

Marius makes a face. “It seems weird to talk about someone Mr. Fauchelevent’s age having a boyfriend,” he says. “It feels disrespectful.”

“Did you get him something?” Éponine demands.

“Yeah,” says Marius. “Just a bottle of wine.”

Éponine throws up her hands. “Ugh, I knew you would! I didn’t get him anything.”

“You can put your name on the tag,” Marius offers. “It’s in the gift bag in the back seat.”

“Is it a good enough wine to put two names on?” she asks, even as she twists around to root through the bag which Gavroche is holding forward.

“’Ponine,” he says. “You know Cosette will agree with what I always say.”

“It’s not about the money,” she sighs, parroting something she’s heard from him on this and other Christmases. Gavroche snorts in the back seat.

“Bullshit,” he says.

“An _excellent_ fucking example of language you are _not_ going to use at Cosette’s house,” Éponine warns. “Oh, here it is.” She pulls it out and inspects the label. “Oh man. Yeah, this is good enough.” She fishes in her purse for a pen.

“It’s Courfeyrac’s,” Marius admits. He wonders briefly why Éponine can recognize a good bottle of wine, before he remembers she grew up in a bar. “He said wine is a nice, respectable gift, and I checked with Cosette to be sure Javert drinks.”

“Javert,” Éponine repeats, looking at the gift tag as they pull up to the house. “Why does that name sounds so familiar?”

Cosette’s house is decked out in innumerable twinkling lights, with an illuminated crèche in the front yard. Gavroche is very impressed with the lights, at least.

“I’m so serious,” Éponine says as she stands in the driveway straightening his hair and tucking his shirttails into his pants. “No cursing, no running, no asking a million questions, _no cursing._ You are to be a perfect goddamn angel.” Marius straightens his Christmas sweater in sympathetic discomfort.

Cosette bursts out the front door in an even more festive sweater, red skirt flying behind her, smile radiant.

“Merry Christmas!” she cries. She throws her arms around Marius and kisses him, and then releases him to throw her arms around Éponine. Éponine straightens and puts one arm around her waist to kiss her back. 

“Merry Christmas,” Marius grins, his heart fluttering a little at how beautiful she looks. He takes the bag of gifts that Gavroche has helpfully dragged out of the car, and they all follow Cosette back up to the door.

“Javert’s nervous,” she whispers. “So don’t worry if he’s stiff. They’re here!” she calls needlessly as they follow her inside. “Who wants warm gingerbread?”

Beside Marius, Éponine gasps, almost too small to hear. Marius is familiar with lavish Christmases from living with his grandfather, fine houses filled with decorations and good smells and beautifully wrapped gifts. His grandfather was good at making Christmas feel cold and austere anyway, but the eight foot tall tree, decked in sparkling ornaments and tinsel, is not a shock. He imagines the sweet, tasteful Christmas that surrounds them now is probably ten times the Christmas the Thenardiers ever gave Éponine or Gavroche.

“Holy— uh, cow,” Gavroche says, coming in behind Éponine.

Mr. Fauchelevent rises from the sofa, where he was sitting with another man, thin and frowning, dressed in a navy blue sweater with, inexplicably, a dark green scarf wrapped around his throat. Maybe he has a cold.

“Merry Christmas, kids,” Mr. Fauchelevent says, coming over to hug them. Éponine still has a hard time sometimes knowing what to do when she’s being hugged, but Marius leans into it. Mr. Fauchelevent is built like a linebacker and gives _great_ dad hugs. Gavroche gets a fist bump instead.

“And this is my… this is Javert,” he says, gesturing to the man on the couch. Marius wonders if ‘boyfriend’ sounds weird to him, too. Javert, for his part, raises a hand to wave haltingly.

“Ah, merry Christmas,” he says, very formally. Cosette wasn’t kidding about stiff. 

Gavroche is looking at the man carefully as he pulls off his coat.

“Don’t I know you?” he says. Javert, even more on guard, squints back at him. Marius has no idea where the two of them could have possibly met, but he feels oddly disinclined to doubt Gavroche. 

Cosette emerges from the kitchen with a plate stacked with gingerbread cookies. Marius is taking Éponine’s coat when Gavroche snaps his fingers.

“You’re that cop that busted my folks a couple years back!” he declares.

Everyone in the room freezes. 

If Javert was stiff before, it’s nothing on his posture now. Cosette stands still with her plate of cookies, looking horrified. Mr. Fauchelevent’s face is a blank mask, but his eyes are switching between Gavroche and Javert. Éponine just has her eyes closed, her arms half out of her coat.

Gavroche grins.

“Nice one,” he says.

Cosette and her father look confused if relieved, but Marius thinks he and Éponine both let out breaths they didn’t know they were holding. There’s no love lost between the Thenardier kids and their parents, but… family can be a weird subject.

“I’m retired,” Javert returns solemnly to Gavroche, his shoulders looking a little uncoiled. “But thank you.”

Mr. Fauchelevent mutters something that sounds like “thank God,” and takes a gingerbread cookie.

Gingerbread isn’t the only thing Cosette has been baking. There’s sugar cookies too, and peppermint bark, zucchini bread, snickerdoodles, and two pies that she keeps having to jump up and go check.

“I can get it, little bird,” says her father in amusement the third time she runs over to the kitchen.

“I’ve got it!” she sings out. She certainly doesn’t seem to need the help; she brings around plate after plate, until everyone is turning treats away except Gavroche. Marius has no idea where the kid puts it.

“You’re going to make me fat,” Mr. Fauchelevent protests laughingly, shaking his head at another fresh batch of cookies.

“Even if it were possible, I think you would be charming fat,” Cosette says, eyes twinkling. “Like Santa Claus. But okay. Javert can’t use that excuse—I don’t think any number of cookies in the world could make him fat. Javert, do you want a cookie?”

Javert takes a cookie from the platter and moves it to the plate in his lap, which also holds an untouched square of fudge and slow progress on a piece of zucchini bread. He is sitting with his back not quite touching the back of the sofa, his chin buried in the knitted scarf around his neck. He smiles minutely and nods as Cosette beams at him and whisks off to the kitchen again. 

“Not so big on sweets?” Éponine says, in what Marius recognizes as a valiant attempt at conversation that she’s been working up to since Gavroche identified him as a (former) police officer. Old habits die hard, he guesses.

Javert’s smile goes amused, but a little more solid.

“I have no problem with sweets,” he says. “But she’s been pushing them at me since I got here this morning. I’m trying to pace myself now.”

“She’s just happy to have someone else to eat her baking besides me,” Mr. Fauchelevent laughs. Javert takes a small bite of the cookie as Cosette comes back into the room and returns it to the plate.

Between him and three of the other people in the room, Marius thinks he’s gotten a pretty good handle on the ‘cares a lot about Cosette’ look, and Javert is wearing it now. Éponine looks like she’s spotted it too.

“Hey, that scarf,” she says. “Cosette didn’t knit that for you, did she?”

Marius feels stupid for not realizing it on his own. Now that Éponine mentions it, he’s pretty sure he’s seen Cosette knitting something that color in the last month or so.

“She couldn’t wait and gave it to him as soon as he showed up,” Mr. Fauchelevent laughs.

“And he put it on right away,” Cosette adds, dimpling.

Javert looks like it has only just occurred to him that sitting in the warm living room with a scarf wound around his neck is a little smiles haltingly, like he doesn’t have much practice at it.

“It’s lovely,” Javert says.

“It becomes you,” says Jean, and Javert lightens just a little. 

It all reassures Marius some; Javert’s demeanor was so stern, Marius was doubting he was enjoying himself at all, and possibly thinking Javert disapproved of Christmas on principle. Now he thinks maybe that’s just Javert’s face.

“Somebody has my x-wing antenna under their shoe,” Gavroche declares, holding up the half-built elaborate lego model that he got from Cosette. (Shoes go up. It’s Mr. Fauchelevent.)

While Gav is occupied with his x-wing and Cosette’s next batch of cookies bake, Éponine gives Jean a book on backyard vegetable gardening, which he loves and starts paging through right away. Marius vaguely recalls several Sunday dinners ago, when Mr. Fauchelevent mentioned something about wanting to plant more than just flowers next year.

He shouldn’t be surprised that Éponine remembered. She cultivates a careful callous demeanor, but he knows better than most how many emotions she can hide behind that front. Among those she trusts it’s clear that Éponine is a deep well of sentiment and affectionate impulses. And she observes, sees all the important things that Marius is inclined to miss. It hasn’t been that long, but he’s still often ashamed he didn’t have the good sense to fall in love with her first.

Mr. Fauchelevent returns the gift with one of his own, a fuzzy dark purple sweater with flecks of silver that’s very much Éponine’s color even if it doesn’t look like a style she’d ever pick out for herself.

“Try it on!” Gavroche demands, possibly thinking the same thing and seizing his chance to see his tough as nails big sister in a fluffy sweater.

“Yes, try it on!” Cosette seconds, apparently unsarcastically.

Éponine gives her little brother a look, and Marius suppresses a grin.

“So how did you two meet?” Marius says toward the sofa as Éponine fits the sweater over her head. “Cosette says you’re old friends?”

The two men look at each other a little oddly. 

“Yes,” says Mr. Fauchelevent slowly. “Old friends.”

“We… worked together,” Javert adds, but shuts his mouth and doesn’t seem to be inclined to say anything else. That doesn’t really tell Marius much, since Mr. Fauchelevent has never actually mentioned what he used to do, and with his beautiful house and pro wrestler shoulders, Marius has started wondering if Cosette’s dad was a mafia bodyguard or something. Marius suspects he might have just put his foot in it.

“They won’t even tell me how they met,” Cosette laughs as bright as summer, confirming with her cheerful diplomacy that Marius has indeed just put his foot in it. “If I haven’t gotten it out of them by the spring, I’m thinking of asking for the story for my birthday.”

With the collar and cuffs of her black blouse showing underneath, Éponine makes even the fuzzy sweater look cool and urbane. Marius would suspect he is biased, but Gavroche looks disappointed in his quest for teasing material.

“Don’t mind Marius,” Éponine says, straightening the hem of the sweater. “He asks everyone that question. He loves relationship stories, he thinks they’re all cute and interesting even when they aren’t.“

Marius doesn’t think he asks everyone that question, but he knows where this is leading. He’s been teased about it before. “We have a good story!“ he protests, gesturing between him and  
Éponine. The other story is long, and mostly cute, except for the parts that weren’t much fun and are still kind of fresh.

“We don’t,” Éponine says flatly, addressing it to the men on the sofa. “We met in a sandwich deli.”

There’s more to it than that, but Marius laughs along with everyone. He guesses he is kind of a romantic.

“Open this one,” Gavroche commands, holding a flat rectangular box out to Mr. Fauchelevent. He laughs and accepts it.

Marius thinks, not for the first time, about how much less scared he is now, as Cosette’s dad tears the paper off of Gav’s present. Possibilities like people laughing at him, or him running into his grandfather, or him goofing up in an important social situation used to terrify him, but now he ha Éponine and Cosette there, to notice and understand things, to look out for him. His cheeks are still pink from his misstep, but any tension is already long gone in the wake of Cosette’s laughter and Éponine’s redirection. He’s really, really lucky to have them.

Mr. Fauchelevent laughs, and lifts a Snoopy necktie out of the box for everyone to see. Cosette laughs too, and Éponine rolls her eyes. Gavroche looks very pleased with himself as Jean drapes the tie around his neck—Marius is sure Gav picked it out himself and that Éponine tried to get him to choose something else.

Mr. Fauchelevent levers himself up off the sofa and flicks the end of the tie over his shoulder like a scarf.

“Well, if we all still have room after Cosette’s baking, I should probably start dinner,” he says. “You all can keep going, I won’t be far.”

“I’ll join you,” Javert says, rising as well. Jean looks like he’s about to protest, then just looks fond instead. If Cosette does get the story for her birthday, Marius hopes she’ll share.

Cosette goes over to the tree as Javert follows Mr. Fauchelevent into the kitchen. She pulls out a small package wrapped in blue and silver paper, and brings it over to Marius where he sits on the recliner.

“This one is from both of us,” Cosette says, and perches on the arm of the chair. Éponine scoots over to lean against his leg as he opens it.

It’s a brown leather wallet, the color of burnished mahogany. He remembers them tutting over his threadbare nylon billfold and laughs.

“Thank you, you guys, this is beautiful,” he says. He flips it open and gasps.

There in thep display pocket is a white piece of paper, folded to neatly frame handwritten words. _All my love, your father._

It’s his dad’s letter, the last one he sent before he died, the only one Marius’s grandfather didn’t manage to intercept. Marius pulls the paper out and unfolds it. It’s crisp and clean, not dogeared and soft from that first year of carrying it around with him everywhere. He only stopped when he accidentally ripped the corner—now it lives in a drawer in his desk. 

He can feel a lump rising in his throat. Éponine tips her head to rest on his knee.

“It was Cosette’s idea,” she says.

“’Ponine took the letter to the copy shop,” Cosette returns.

Éponine grins and props her chin on Marius’s knee. “I went over to your place on my lunch break while you were in class,” she says. “Courfeyrac let me in.”

Marius shouldn’t be surprised that Éponine knows where he keeps the letter. He rubs at his watering eyes with the sleeve of his sweater. “Thank you so much, this is wonderful.”

He wishes his father could be here. He wishes Georges Pontmercy could sit beside Javert and Jean on the sofa, and laugh and eat peppermint bark and unwrap a funny novelty tie. He wishes he could have gotten a Christmas present from his dad, just once.

He really is crying now. Two sets of arms wrap around him, and he places a hand over where they cross on his chest.

“I wish he could’ve met you,” he sniffles. “You guys are the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“You big baby,” says Éponine fondly. He gives a watery laugh and puts the wallet in his lap so he can hug both of them back. Gavroche, sitting on the ground and playing with his lego model, tactfully pretends not to notice the scene going on beside him.

Marius mops at his face again with his sweater sleeve. “Let Gavroche open the next one,” he says smiling as the girls release him. “Your presents will never measure up to this.”

“Don’t be silly,” Cosette says, but Gavroche is already going for the tree. He pulls out a big one marked from Marius and shreds the paper thoroughly.

“Risk?” he reads off the box.

“A little more strategy than Monopoly,” Marius says. Gavroche turns the box around to look at the back and Éponine raises an incredulous eyebrow at the cover.

“‘Napoleon edition,’ you nerd?” she says.

Marius shrugs. “What?” he says. “It’s educational.”

Éponine goes over to look at the box with Gavroche, and Marius sits with his new wallet in one hand and Cosette’s hand around his other.

Cosette loves the lark brooch he found at an antique shop back in October; Éponine kisses him on the cheek for the studded heels she’d been sighing at in November. Javert and Mr. Fauchelevent come back into the sitting room to finish the gifts while dinner cooks. Javert hands Jean an old looking book, which makes Jean tip back his head and laugh when he opens the cover and sees the title. A smile pulls at the corners of Javert’s mouth like puppet strings, and it makes Marius smile too as he pretends to focus on unscrewing the battery door on a robot toy for Gavroche. In return, Javert gets a silver pocketwatch, with something engraved on the inside that makes him press his lips together and reach over to put his hand over Jean’s silently. Jean smiles and puts his other hand over Javert’s. Marius can’t help but be curious, but he pops double As into the back of the robot and doesn’t ask.

Soon the hoard under the tree is depleted and a timer in the kitchen is ringing. Marius puts his new wallet in his pocket before they go in to supper; he sees Javert do the same with his new watch.

Marius has done the big family holiday dinner before, but it’s never felt like this. Christmas dinner at his grandfather’s was stiff and polite, everyone wearing their best and everyone under 30 expected to be seen and not heard. With the exception, of course, of his cousin who voted the same as his grandfather.

This couldn’t be more different. Marius feels the equal of all the grown ups at the table, in a way that makes him startlingly conscious of what Éponine is always saying to him, about how they are the grown ups now. When Jean passes Marius the green beans and nods seriously at something Marius is saying about his degree, Marius actually believes it.

And nobody shouts at Gavroche for interrupting Cosette, or gesturing with his fork, or knocking over the pepper mill. The most he gets is a poke in the ribs from Éponine for laughing with food in his mouth. Everyone _wants_ Gavroche to talk; they like him. They like Marius, too. 

Everyone is talking, even Javert in an undertone to Jean next to him, and once across the table to Marius on the subject of antique stores when Marius is talking about where he got Cosette’s gift. Everyone is laughing and leaving dribbles and crumbs on the tablecloth. Everyone wants to be here, and they would notice if Marius weren’t here.

It’s as strange as it is wonderful, and Marius wonders if this is what home was always supposed to feel like.

After dinner, they go in to set up Gavroche’s Risk game. Marius picks a color for his army, and then goes back into the kitchen to grab another of Cosette’s cookies.

Javert is there, uncorking the wine that Marius and Éponine gave him. He opens a cupboard and takes down a wine glass, and then another. He raises the second glass and his eyebrows just as Marius is taking a bite of a sugar cookie, and Marius panics internally for a moment before covering his mouth and nodding. He chews and swallows as Javert pours the second glass.

“Thanks,” he says, and takes the wine glass. He lifts it in a small toast. “Merry orphans’ Christmas,” he says with a little laugh.

Javert stiffens, and frowns.

Oh no, what has Marius said _now?_

“It’s not— it’s just something Éponine says,” he says quickly. He doesn’t know why Javert would be offended. Maybe he isn’t? Maybe it’s just his face again? Maybe he’s an actual orphan too and he’s sensitive about it? “An orphan’s Christmas, it’s a. It’s a thing, where people who can’t go have Christmas with their family for whatever reason, like travel or something, they… have Christmas together? Instead of alone? I’m not saying… I mean, I’m not only here because…”

He doesn’t know how to articulate that it was a joke in part because orphans’ Christmases are for people who don’t belong where they are, and Marius has been not belonging for most of his life and this has been the exception.

Javert must understand despite Marius’s stammering, because his posture relaxes again and, after a few moments’ hesitation, he lifts his glass to mimic Marius’s toast and inclines his head slightly.

“Merry… orphans’ Christmas, then,” he says, his lips quirking as though he has caught the humor of it too.

“Javert!” comes Cosette’s voice from the sitting room. “You waited too long to pick, you’re the yellow army with me!”

Javert exchanges a look with Marius.

“I wasn’t aware I was playing,” he calls back as he heads back into the living room.

Marius grabs a piece of gingerbread, and follows.


End file.
